Strong return

Britpop's not dead - it's just turned a little blue. The Bluetones were part of the b-division bunch, the second team to follow The Stone Roses and Blur. While their fellow players, Gene and Shed Seven, seem to have stalled around the 10-yard line, Mark Morriss and his Hounslow heroes still seem to be scoring with their fans, and The Mean Fiddler was packed for their not-so-slight return to the Dublin stage.

The band had played a gig in Galway's Black Box the night before, and they sounded a bit off-colour on some of the tracks, losing the momentum a little and relying on the crowd's enthusiasm. Lead singer Morriss sounded a little gravelly, but kept his vocal chords lubricated with copious amounts of water, delivering lines like, "It's all I can do/To sing these stupid songs to you" with panache and confidence.

Songs from their two studio albums, Expecting To Fly and Return To The Last Chance Saloon, aren't stupid at all, and some of them even verged on the sublime. Slight Return, Cut Some Rug and Broken Starr gave the fans the musical fix they needed, while a cover of a tune by psychedelic group, The Left Banke, solidified Britpop's cultural link with the 1960s. Kind of makes The Seahorses seem plodding.